A Ferguson grand jury and the Department of Justice both declined to charge former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, but now Brown’s family has announced they will file a wrongful death suit against the officer and the city of Ferguson. (RELATED: Report: DOJ Blames Ferguson Police Practices On Racial Animosity)
“We do want to announce today that we are officially in a process of formulating a civil case that we anticipate will be filed very shortly on behalf of the family,” said Brown family attorney Anthony Gray. “In our case, we plan to show and outline pretty much the same evidence. However, you will get a more clearer, a more accurate picture of what took place that day.”
“We feel and we’ve always felt from the very beginning that Officer Darren Wilson did not have to shoot and kill Mike Brown Jr. in broad daylight in the manner that he did, that he had other options available to him and he chose deadly force as his option,” he continued. “We plan to demonstrate in a court of law to reasonable-minded people that the choice to use deadly force was unreasonable and unnecessary under those circumstances.”
Gray said the family disagreed with the conclusions of the federal civil rights investigation of Wilson’s conduct. At the same time, he said, “the burden of proof for the federal and the state investigations is far different than the burden of proof in a civil case that we anticipate bringing on behalf of the family…” (RELATED: Ferguson Protesters Demand Police Be ‘Tolerant’ Of ‘Minor Lawbreaking’)
At one point, Brown family attorneys were visibly peeved when a reporter asked about the DoJ’s conclusion that “discredited” the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative. “There’s a difference between hands over your head, and hands up,” attorney Daryl Parks pushed back. “That’s one clear distinction we’ve seen already as we have reviewed the report.”